Education: Report Card for Americans

Most parents view academic achievement in individual termsthat is, how
their kids stack up against their immediate classmates. In fact, the
U.S. has done little to determine the knowledge levels of entire age
groups across the nation. What, for instance, do American
nine-year-olds really know about math? What do they not know? Where are
13-year-olds most deficient in literature, say, or social studies?

Meeting in Denver last week, the Education Commission of the States
supplied some preliminary answers by releasing the first results of an
ambitious project called the National Assessment of Educational...